


Untitled

by SharpestRose



Category: Popslash
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 22:06:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a member of Savage Garden and a member of 'N Sync kiss in a nightclub.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled

Sometimes, when it's late and the lights are off and all that's visible is the silhouette of the face beside his on the pillows, Darren thinks Josh looks like Daniel. He doesn't want to, because the breakup, however inevitable it may have been, still stings, and it was always strictly professional, hardly even friendship those last few years. There shouldn't be a comparison at all, but he can't help making one in the dark, sometimes. 

Darren's never been easy to nickname. The fans call him Daz and Dazza, at least back in Australia, but he'd never used those himself, and he's rarely in Australia nowadays to hear them anyway. Oh, yeah, he's a patriot, just like the blindfold said. His family used to call him Dozer but even that's tapered off, he sheds old skins like a snake and nobody knows who he is underneath the layers. He's got so few names himself, just Darren and Mr Hayes really, that he collects other people's diminutives to fill the void. Leonie is Leo and Ni and Nini and a million other stupid variations every day, which usually earn him a roll of her eyes. 

Josh has so many names. JC and Jayce and C and Joshua and Chasez. Darren doesn't call him any of them, it's too new yet, he can't presume a familiarity that Josh's friends have taken years to earn. 

There are other names too, chatroom names, stinkylittlemonkey and loserbrain and bubblepop, but Darren outgrew that phase a long time ago, when the real world got as fake as the world on the screen. Josh says he went through that too, that desire for distance and constructed identities. They both ended up writing songs about it. 

If they hadn't, they might never have met. Darren tends to shoot his mouth off in interviews at times, and had made a few choice remarks about boy bands on several occasions, about them not writing their own songs. Two weeks later his cellphone rang, the private phone, the one that nobody knew the number for. But Darren knew firsthand that pop stars can click their fingers and have the world on a platter, so it didn't really surprise him. There wasn't a single part of him that someone didn't own. 

Josh had been amused and annoyed at the same time over the phone, telling Darren to get his facts right. So Darren went out and bought a couple of their albums, even though he tended to fall on the Backstreet side of the rivalry. All right, so Josh had made his point. Darren sent him a basket, asked Leonie to arrange something to be sent over, and forgot about it. Took the albums out of his player, put Dido on instead, and forgot about it. 

In interviews he started making jokes about not being allowed into 'N Sync's area at clubs, almost a challenge to see if he'd be called on his remarks for a second time. Sure enough, a few days later his phone rang, a new number that even Leonie didn't know yet, and Josh informed Darren that if he was so anxious to go dancing with them, he could come on Saturday night. 

He felt graceless and ancient, even though Chris was a little older than him, watching the five of them move with the ease of dancers under the lights of the disco ball while he hung back. The DJ was spinning old Madonna remixes, making Darren miss his New York days. 

"You wrote a song about this sort of night." Josh commented, standing beside him on the edge of the dancefloor, humming a little of 'Violet' under his breath, surprising Darren. 

"Mm." Darren nodded, wishing he could remember more of the songs he'd listened to on the albums. It had unnerved him, playing them, reminding him that he was already stepping aside to let the next wave of pouty, pretty boys into the magazines. 

"And that other one, the chained to you one. Did that really happen, you just met someone on the dancefloor and went for it, without knowing them?" 

"Yeah." Darren nodded, smiling at the memory. A doomed love affair, designed to purge Colby from his hurting heart. It had almost worked, too. 

"I wrote one about the same thing, but it never really happened to me. Just wishful thinking." Josh admitted with a wry grin. "I've never lived the wild popstar life like you." 

"Yeah, that's me, wild and crazy. I trash hotel rooms all the time." Darren quipped, and then grinned when Josh laughed loud and long at the remark. His eyes smiled more than his mouth, and that was the first time Darren noticed how much like Daniel this man could look. 

Maybe that's why he did it, to drive thoughts of empty silences and creative differences and widening gulfs out of his head. To remind himself that Josh wasn't Daniel, that this was something new and vital, not old and decaying. Maybe he did it because it felt right, felt like the right thing to do under the lights of the club and the beat of the music. Maybe there wasn't a reason at all. 

Whatever the catalyst had been, Darren took a hesitant step forward and saw the mild surprise in Josh's eyes that were a little like Daniel's as their lips brushed. Gloss against gloss, Josh tasted like alcohol to Darren, the edge of liquor that he still didn't really have a taste for even after so long drinking it himself. 

It wasn't the sort of kiss the little girls would have wanted, wasn't sugary and tender and sweet like love songs. It was a little awkward at first until they got their heads at the right angle, and a bit too dry until they stopped being nervous, and came to a rather unceremonious ending when one of Josh's bandmates ordered them to get a room and quit giving the tabloids such a temptation. 

They didn't get a room that night, because at least some of the sugary-tender-sweet lyrics had been from the heart for both of them and that made them want to behave like gentlemen. Two days later, though, Darren's cellphone had blipped yet again and Josh had sounded as bemused and amused as ever on the other end of the line. 

For the first time Darren didn't need to justify himself, didn't need to say 'it's bad for the voice, the throat' as an explination. Josh got it, Josh was in the same predicament. They both knew what was ok and what wasn't, and sidestepped that whole uncomfortable thing of talking about it first. They were the same, really, underneath the layers. 

Except Josh still had his band, still joked and got along with and hung around with the men he shared poster space with. Didn't know the fear of creating a 'post-split solo effort', alone where there'd always been a unit. 

Darren tries not to think about his upcoming album too much, it's one of those things that's still a raw nerve. He'll grow a new skin over it, in time, he knows, but for new it's tender to touch. He doesn't let himself dwell on things that hurt, like Colby or Australia or Daniel. There are other things to think about, new things that don't hurt. Like Josh. Sometimes, when it's late, Josh looks like Daniel, but in the morning he looks like himself, and that's how Darren knows that things really are darkest just before dawn. 


End file.
